Hip Hop Smoothed Out On an R&B Tip

The first concert I ever went to was Huey Lewis and the News. My favorite thing in the world was sports, and Huey had an album called, well, "Sports".

And for some reason, members of the San Francisco 49ers would go on stage with the band during their shows. Since the Niners were/are my favorite team, this seemed pretty awesome. And I have no idea why but it didn't even seem that strange at the time. It's like, "Cool! They're doing 'Heart of Rock N' Roll' and linebacker Ricky Ellison is playing the bongos!"

The second concert I ever went to was headlined by MC Hammer. But I was really there for the middle act, which was a new group called Boyz II Men. I remember getting to the arena in Oakland, and inside it was maybe a third full, and the opener was just finishing up their last song. It was TLC, and no one gave a shit.

The third concert I ever went to was Bell Biv Devoe. The opener was Johnny Gill, and the second act was Keith Sweat.

At the close of the show, BBD brought out a basketball hoop. Music and sports! But Ricky Ellison was nowhere to be found. Anyway, after the song "Poison" was all but wrapped up, Bell, or was it Devoe? threw up what amounted to a half court shot and hit nothing but net. I thought it was just about the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.

A year later I saw them again in San Diego. Again, the basketball hoop came out. But this time, about 10 bricks followed. See? It really had been amazing!

Well last night, exactly 20 years later, I went to see BBD at the House of Blues. My life has come full circle.

The crowd was great. Before BBD went onstage, the DJ warmed us up with some EPMD, Bobby Brown, Mary J. Blige, Naughty By Nature, and even some Another Bad Creation. Every time a new song came on, there was an audible "awwww shit". As in, "aw shit, that's my jam". These were my people.

Finally, BBD came on. They opened with the song "Dope", just as they did in 1990. There was a tiny black woman next to me (most of the black women there could not be described as "tiny"), and at one point, during "Do Me", we were doing the "Do Me" dance from the video in unison. To the left, then to the right, then to the left again. It had to be what Martin Luther King Jr. had in mind.

But then an annoying Asian lady next to me couldn't do it and crashed into me - she went left as we were going right - causing me to ruin my flow with the tiny Black Lady, and I imagined her disappointment as she chalked me up to just another white dude.

The great thing about the House of Blues is that there are no seats. It is standing room only, and you can get as close to the stage as you can push yourself to. I also learned that this can be a bad thing.

Because 20 years ago, my seats were way far away on the 2nd deck. But last night, I was right up in Ricky Bell's grill. And it made me very self conscious. Why?

Well, because I am literally 10 feet away from them. So as Michael Bivins is singing "the time was 6:00 on the Swatch watch...", I am singing "the time was 6:00 on the Swatch watch..." and the dude is looking RIGHT AT ME!


We're making eye contact over this gay song. And I start thinking about what he must be thinking about. Namely, look at this 34 year old dork singing about Swatch watches! It was a strange and slightly humiliating experience, for the both of us.

But it was a great show. In fact, it was nearly identical to the show they did way back when. I think the song order was even the same. Of course, one thing was different - they no longer have the budget for the basketball hoop routine.

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Possibly My Last Post of 2010 Tomorrow!

I will be telling the story of the concert I'm going to tonight. I hope something funny happens, either way, you'll hear about it...

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This Lady Works in Every Administration

I was watching one my favorite movies, "Dave", today and noticed this lady:


And I was thinking to myself, "God Damn! Is that lady in every movie about the white house?"

So I looked her up on IMDB, and she is!

She was in "The American President", "The Manchurian Candidate", and was a recurring character on "The West Wing".

I know Hollywood loves to pigeon hole people, but jeez, this seems awfully specific. She must sit around her house praying someone is writing the next President movie.

I guess she exudes authority. When a white President is in office, he needs an older black lady to tell him what is what. But the same doesn't go for a black President, because Chris Rock egregiously kept her out of "Head of State'.

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Big Government vs. Free Enterprise

People who hate big government always like to argue about it's inefficiencies by saying "look at the US postal service!" It definitely has its issues, there's no arguing that. But I'm always amazed that I can drop an envelope into a giant blue box on a random street and then someone 500 miles away is handed that same envelope the next day. And also, Netflix.

A competitor to the US Postal Service that isn't run by the government is Fed Ex. To the people who shit on the regular post office I would ask, "have you been to a Fed Ex location lately?"

Cause I got a notice on my door that there was a package I needed to sign for. Then the next day I got a second notice. Since I have a job, it wasn't looking good for that signature to happen. So after work I hauled my ass down to Fed Ex, which has a lot less locations than the Post Office, with seemingly all of them being in the hood.

I go in there and I'm immediately met by a crowd of people. It wasn't a line, it was just people waiting. Oh boy. But there was also a line. And this is the system that they had in place:

Two people worked the front desk. They would take people's door tags. After they had 10 or so, then both of them would leave their post, go into the back, and hunt down the packages.

Meanwhile, the line of people with door tags to give them would grow. I spent 45 minutes there, just to pick up an envelope. Here was the scene:


And there were more people behind me, and to the left, and to the right. I love how angry everyone looks in this picture though.

In summation, Fed Ex sucks.

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More Anger

After the success of my last post - the comments section lit up like wildfire - I figured you'd love to hear more anger. Well, I've got it for you. Here's the latest on deadline.com:

CBS DEVELOPING TWITTER BASED FAMILY COMEDY PRODUCED BY JESSICA ALBA

In 1997, Kelly Oxford, a stay-at-home mother of three in Canada, started a blog that was later joined by a Twitter feed. Her Internet creations, which reflect her comedic observations and musings about mundane things, pop culture and current events, grew to become a cultural force and attracted the attention of Hollywood’s elite, including actress Jessica Alba. Now, Oxford is writing Mother of All Something, a comedy project for CBS based on her blog and Twitter feed, with Alba attached to executive produce.

How many things are wrong with this news?

Let's start with the first and most obvious: Jessica Alba.

She's on as an executive producer. That implies, at least to me, that someone in the world thinks Jessica Alba is too big for TV, but she's such a star and big name, that she can come down to poor little television and throw her name on something as an EP, and this will somehow help the show become successful.

Because if there is one thing Jessica Alba knows, it is successful entertainment. Can you imagine the script notes Executive Producer Jessica Alba gives? Make it a little more like "Into The Blue".

Don't you have to demonstrate some sort of consistent success and savvy to be an Executive Producer?

"All right, guys. Great set of pilots this season, time to make some hard choices. The question is: Should we pick up the show from Bruckheimer, the one from Brian Grazer, the one from JJ Abrams, or that twitter feed Jessica Alba follows?"

Okay, second part. Twitter.

This is the 3rd show CBS has bought that started as a twitter feed. I don't get it. I really don't. And I'm not a hater about it - congrats to everyone who sells something like this. But from the network's perspective, what is the thinking?

There's not a substantial fan base of twitter feeds. No one was clamoring to see "Shit My Dad Sees" because they loved the twitter. In fact, it seems the opposite is true. People wanted to hate it. So that can't be it.

And as I once brilliantly tweeted myself:

"if you took the best lines from a shitty sitcom, you'd have a funny twitter feed. then cbs would buy it and you'd have a shitty sitcom"

Incidentally, I really thought that tweet was going to be huge, thus spawning it's own sitcom. Instead, crickets.

But the point, people, is clear. Hire 5 sitcom writers, put them in a room, have them only come up with tweets. Believe me, it would be hilarious. Put those same writers in a room, have them write a half hour script for Jenna Elfman. Believe me, it would be a piece of shit.

They're different things! Tweets aren't a sitcom. Sitcoms have a few jokes a minute, A, B, and C stories, runners, call backs, act breaks, tags, and different characters.

I'm not really sure what the point is here. "Shit My Dad Says" got on the air. Okay. But it's a very traditional sitcom, not a new idea in anyway, and they got Shatner.

At the end of the day, I think it's just about being easy to understand for the executives and a somewhat proven commodity. They don't have to read a yucky 50 page script, they get 140 characters. And they get it without all that annoying story or drama. It's boiled down to jokes that have been proven to be funny by people on twitter.

I get that. So I guess the real confusing thing in this whole equation is Alba. What is she bringing to the table exactly? She clearly doesn't know what a good script looks like. She doesn't know TV, unless you count her infamous 1 episode arc as a pregnant teen on 90210. Oh, and "Dark Angel".

Is this is a sign that she might be thinking her movie career is over? Is it TV time for her? Maybe if she's just an EP and then it goes down, no harm done. But if she's attached to star and it fails, then it looks really bad. Alba isn't even good enough to be on TV!

That must be it. If this thing gets a 13 episode order, she's the lead. If not, it was supposed to star Kristen Kreuk or Summer Glau and nobody will be the wiser.

I've cracked the case. You're welcome. Now get to twitter, there's a sitcom deal out there waiting for you.

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My 1st Annual Black List Award

The Black List came out today. That is the list of the "best unproduced screenplays of the year", as voted on by agents and managers".

In truth, many of these scripts are getting produced. I believe "The Social Network" was on it last year. And there are always accusations that one agency or the other manipulated the list.

But whatever, it's all we got, and it's probably a good enough representation of what scripts people liked. It's also fascinating to read and see what ideas are floating around.

The joke among my friends is that getting on the Black List is all about the title. There are always scripts that make it with swear words in the title and little else. Last year, "I Want to Fuck Your Sister" was on it. This year, we get "I Fucked Your Mom".

It feels like it's more about a gimmick than anything else. But more power to them.

Coincidentally, the day the Black List comes out is also the same day when I get really angry reading the Black List, mostly because I am sad and bitter. There is inevitably some awful stuff on it. It's usually a hacky logline that sets me off, and this year was no different.

But before we get to that, let's take a look at the list in general.

Zombies were big this year. Lots of zombies. There's a movie called "Boy Scouts vs. Zombies", and one called "Zombie baby". How about this one:

KITCHEN SINK by Oren Uziel
“A human teenager, a vampire, and a zombie must save their town from an alien invasion.”

That's everything that's popular in one! You have to buy it because it has everything people like right now. Something tells me Oren wasn't writing his little passion project on this one.

That's exactly the kind of script that ends up on this list, only he forgot to call it "I Want to Fuck Zombies and Vampires".

I've read a number of the scripts on here, some of which are really good. I'm actually not that angry about the list, and it's nice to read stuff that is great and see that other people think it's great too.

My current favorite is this guy named Dan Fogelman. He's also Hollywood's favorite right now, and he is unquestionably the hottest writer in town. He sold 3 specs this year for like $6 million bucks. 2 of them are on the list. I liked both. Here's one:

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. by Dan Fogelman
“Straight-laced, forty-something Cal Weaver is living the dream – good job, nice house,great kids, and marriage to his high school sweetheart - but when Cal learns that his wife, Emily, has cheated on him and wants a divorce, his ‘perfect’ life quickly unravels.”

This movie is going to star Steve Carell. It's a great script, and shows why you can't always trust a logline. The weird thing about it is there is not a single original thing in it. Not one. You've seen all of it before, and yet...the script is amazing! He did it in an original, funny way, that you can completely see as a movie. He is a beast. Congrats.

But enough pleasantries, let's get back to the bitterness.

I'm here to announce that for the first time ever, I will be giving out my very own Black List Award.

This award goes to the screenplay on the Black List that most angers me. There were several strong candidates this year, but I'm happy to say that one stood out above all others. In fact, upon first reading it on the list, I thought it was some kind of cruel joke.

But before we get to that, we have co-runners up...

Co-Runner up:

HOT MESS by Jenni Ross
“Four girlfriends make, and then break, a list of rules devised to get the guys of their dreams and discover their inner hot messes in the process.”

I really hate "rules to find the perfect mate" premises. So annoying. Even Kate Hudson won't do them anymore. You can feel the log line struggling to connect with the title - a "hip" phrase that assures us of how hip the writer is. Here's a hip phrase: fuck you.

Co-Runner Up:

REPLAY by Jason Smilovic
“Based on the Ken Grimwood novel. A man dies, wakes up in his 18-year old body, and gets to relive his life over and over. With his original memory intact, he takes the opportunity to travel down roads he passed up the first time around.”

We all know this movie, we've all seen this movie, and yet here is this movie again. We have to give the screenwriter a break because this is based on a book. The writer got an assignment to turn this thing into a movie and was just doing his job.

But seriously? Did they not see "17 Again"? Okay, they're lucky if they haven't seen it, but they should've at least heard about it. Not to mention Peggy Sue Got Married and a number of other movies. Why am I the only one that needs respect things that have already been done?

Okay, I've delayed it long enough. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your winner, the most anger inducing script of 2010!

PERFECT MATCH by Morgan Schechter & Eric Pearson
“Twenty-eight year old male and female roommates who are longtime best friends and unlucky in love decide to try an internet dating service which promises to introduce them to their ‘perfect match.’ In the process, they discover that they're each other's perfect match.”

Instead of an acceptance speech, thus now begins the traditional post award rage filled rant...

Thanks, everyone. I'm honored to be here tonight. In accepting this award on behalf of the writers, I'd like to ask them one question:

How in the hell, in motherfucking 2010, are you writing this script?! How? Answer me!

How do you sit at your computer, and go "I have a brilliant idea!" and write this unoriginal trash? Why aren't you answering me?

You do realize that it's been done on every sitcom, right? Every single one has done this. That's not an exaggeration. Even non-sitcoms have done it, hell, 90210 did it with Steve and Claire!

How hacky is it? They literally did it on "Three's Company"! No seriously, they did:

"Mate For Each Other" May 11, 1982
Jack and Janet meet with friends, a couple who were paired together by a computer dating service. Initially dismissive of the idea, Jack decides to try out the service secretly. When Jack arrives at the designated meeting place, he is shocked to discover he has been paired up with an equally secretive Janet.

There weren't even computers in 1982 and they did this shit! That's how awful it is. People were doing this idea before it was even possible to do this idea. It was thought of in advance!

Why does this piss me off so much?

Okay, I spend every God Damn minute of every God Damn day thinking that someone might be doing the same idea as me. I get a pit in my stomach every morning when I check deadline.com worried that my idea has been sold by someone else. This is my life.

And to think that someone out there is just watching Three's Company one night and does the same thing and it doesn't matter, and is in fact, rewarded for this "effort", drives me up the fricking wall.

I told my agent that I had an idea that took place in a border town next to Mexico. She sent me 3 scripts in development that all involved something with Mexico - none were like my idea - but she said "it's already being done". This is my life.

Three's Company!

But it's all right. I'm calm. I can't be bitter, I can't be angry, I just have to focus on my career.

In fact, I have a pretty good idea I've just started working on. I don't want anyone to steal it, so I can't reveal what it is. But I can tell you that it involves Mr. Furley.

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Just Finished the Book "Unbroken"

I was on the elliptical machine today, working out, and finishing the book "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption" by Laura Hillenbrand, and I was bawling. Just crying my eyes out as I finished.

Now, it could've been the book, or it could've been the result of the worst fantasy football day I've ever experience in my 20 years as General Manager. But it probably was a little bit of both.

Hillenbrand wrote "Seabiscuit", which I didn't read - probably because I hate all animals. But I do enjoy history and nonfiction, and gave this a shot when my sister mentioned it over Thanksgiving.

It's about Louis Zamperini, a long distance runner who competed in the 1936 Olympics. Then when the war started he joined the Air Force, crashed in the Pacific, floated on a raft with no food for 47 days surrounded by sharks, got captured by Japan and sent to POW camps, and somehow made it home.

It probably helped my enjoyment that I had no idea of what was going to happen at all. After every 50 pages I would tell whoever was closest to me: "do you know about this? why isn't this more famous?!"

I knew it was going to be good when I was 100 pages into it and I read the Entertainment Weekly review. It basically said that "after you get past the crappy 100 pages, the good story kicks in". Well, I loved the first 100 pages. The dude makes it to the Olympic in an event he only ran 3 times, hangs out with Jesse Owens, then meets Hitler, all in the first hundred pages! What more do you want, EW?

It's after the last part of the book where I began weeping like a baby. I'm not sure why. But I was disappointed the book was ending there. It seemed like after reading about all the torture this guy had been through, he (and I) deserved some time being happy in America. But it was not to be.

While I agree that it's the crazy/amazing stuff that happened to him during the war that makes the story, it seems a little crappy to me that getting home and living a normal life wasn't worth any pages. I mean, you're leaving out 60 (!) years of this guy's life. He's in his 90's and still kicking around LA. You're telling me nothing cool happened in that time?

Anyway, I recommend it. It's rare that a book makes you root for the A-bomb to be unleashed.

And he should be more famous.

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Confused About Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg was on "60 Minutes" on Sunday. What a weirdo. In a way, he is a lot like R. Kelly. He is a genius at one thing, but that genius comes at the expense of being able to function in society as a normal human being.

Zuckerberg needs to stick to writing code and avoid all cameras and reporters, just as R. Kelly needs to stick to singing and avoid 15 year old girls.

But there's a few things I don't understand about Facebook.

During the interview, they took a little tour of the Facebook offices. Leslie Stahl said that they had to move to a giant hangar to accomodate all of the employees. And they showed a bunch of "hackers" typing away on computers, with Zuckerberg saying they have competitions to write code the fastest.

So my confusion is: what are they working on?

What are all these "hackers" hacking? What code needs to be written? When I go on Facebook, it's the same shit! There's nothing new going on. It's a simple website. News feed? It's still there. Most recent? Humming along. Updates? Same as always.

Espn.com must have 2 hangars - their site has different sports pages, a scoreboard updating every second, streaming video! It must take a whole God Damn city of people to keep that shit going if Facebook needs a hangar.

Another thing: how is it worth $30 billion dollars?

Every time I hear about this company, this number shoots up by about $5 billion. Does no one remember what happened to Myspace?

There's a chance that people might find a new place to stalk their high school crushes. Seems like that should hurt the value a bit.

And finally, why does Zuckerberg stay? Sell! What more can you do? It's facebook! That's it, you did it. You're not thinking up Ipads, you're making everyone look at each other's stupid marathon photos. We get it, you ran 26 miles, so did practically everyone else.

The point is, you won. Cash out. I'm sure facebook is going to branch out in other areas, but the basic premise is pretty much complete.

And if you don't think getting out is a good idea, allow me to introduce you to my friends, Jonathan Abrams, Peter Chin, and Dave Lee. They invented Friendster, they didn't sell, and now they have to live on a paltry hundred million dollars.

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Bangs

Never a good idea.

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Explain to Me Why Glee Isn't the Worst

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This Makes Me Laugh A Lot

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Mailbag!

Sarah asked a question in the comments of my last post, and I started replying and it got too long for the comments. So I thought I'd just do another post about "The Walking Dead". Here's her question:

Sarah said...

How do you feel about the (rumors? news?) about the Walking Dead writing staff? Seems a bit bizarre to me. But I assume you would have more insight into that than most people...

Here's the article about the decision to get rid of the "The Walking Dead" writing staff.

Frank Darabont ("Shawshank Redemption", "The Green Mile") is the man in charge of this show. He wrote the first 2 episodes. He's a feature guy, so maybe he thinks there's a better way to do things in TV.

They don't have staff writers on BBC shows, but they only have 6 episodes to deal with. "The Walking Dead" is doing 13 next season, and (I guess) will rely on freelancers to be hired per show. The main problem with that plan, it would seem to me, would be continuity.

Hiring a guy off the street to write episode 11, and he doesn't know what the hell is going on with the show, would be a pain in the ass. It seems like it would be better to have a group of writers sit and plan out the entire season together, see each episode as it is put together, and find that same voice/tone, etc.

This is going to be a big problem, especially if you just look at the way this 1st season went. Darabont wrote the first 2 episodes of this season (there were only 6), and they were easily the best written. It fell off after that.

The guy who wrote the comic the show is based on is an Executive Producer and would stay and (I assume) write some of the episodes. Well, that sounds good, except for one tiny detail:

He wrote the shittiest episode of the season by far! He's the guy who did the infamous "abuela" episode that seemed like a first draft. So that's not a good sign.

I think it's an interesting model if you only have to do 6, but gets problematic when there is more. It's kinda cool to be able to bring in superstars to write each episode. But when you're dealing with a long season, I just think you'd be looking at a completely different show week to week.

Maybe if you had a true maniac like Aaron Sorkin it would work. He's a control freak who needs to have his imprint on every script. You could get a bunch of researchers and writer's assistants to feed him stuff and then he just cranks.

But I think when he was doing that on "The West Wing" he rarely ever got the shows produced on time. Also, he was doing a ton of drugs.

And finally, the obvious thing is: it's kind of a dick move, right? The show has been a success. It got picked up for a 2nd season, and this is how you do the writing staff? Not cool. If it was me, I'd wanna keep the same formula in place.

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